Day 42 - ANZAC Day

Just before we were due to get out of bed for our early morning trip to Villers-Bretonneux, I twisted in bed and my back went into spasm. What seemed like five seconds later, my phone started going off signifying it was time to stop sleeping, not that I had gotten much sleep.


I managed to shave somewhat stiffly when the phone in our room started ringing, but it wasn’t working sufficiently for Rose to hear the person at the other end of the line. After three attempts, they gave up ringing, but shortly after, a knock came on the door to tell us our tour was ready to leave, about 20 minutes before we thought they would come. So much for that shower.

It was bitterly cold as an early morning in Paris met us. It would not be a long drive out to Vil-Bret, but still half asleep, I was trying to use the arch of the seat to stretch my back sufficiently as to stop it hurting so much.

We stopped in a petrol station just after we got off the motorway for a brief toilet stop, before arriving at the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. It was now extremely cold.

The crowd was large but respectful. A public servant asked for some room, and he escorted the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, through the mass of Aussies so far from home. His staffer’s assertiveness enabled Minister Smith to look more casual, asking a passerby how far she had travelled to be there.

The service was solemn, without being morose. The story of the Aussies in France is one that is often overlooked, as Aussies are beguiled by the myth that is Gallipoli. It is here, in fact, and not on the sand, rocks and shrubs of Turkey, that our great World War I victory was earned.

And so it was, on April 25, 1918, three years to the day since the ANZACs had stormed the beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula, that the Australian Imperial Force liberated the small town of Villers-Bretonneux. The residents of this town are forever grateful: the streets are named Rue Melbourne and Rue Victoria, and the school, built with contributions from Victorian schoolchildren in 1923, has the mantra looming across the quadrangle, “DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA”.

At this time of year, the town becomes like a mini version of Australia. Graphical representations of kangaroos, koalas and wombats line the streets, either in front of the town hall or stuck to the windows of the houses that line Rue Melbourne. For the last couple of years they’ve even played an Aussie Rules game here.

After the service and visiting the town, we are taken on a broader tour of the area and its memorials: the AIF memorial, the British Arch with its dour looking brown brick, in stark contrast to the Arc D’Triomphe in Paris and the Wellington Arch near Hyde Park in London, the Canadian Memorial with its bronze elk.

What strikes one about the commonality of these memorials are the names of the fallen AND unfound. Literally millions fell on the Western Front in World War I, a foolish folly of a war fought for little good reason on outdated military strategy, which basically wiped out a generation of able bodied, proud and brave men.

Most of these men were either never found or never identified. It wasn’t long before this war that soldiers were not afforded individual memorials, such as a tombstone or individual grave, but this had started to change. The area of France known as the Somme is littered with them.

Every French town, regardless of size, has a memorial to the fallen of World War I, and a list of names; men of the town who never returned.

At the final town, we have lunch then visit the Great War Museum there, which is heavily anti-war. After seeing the volume of names on memorial after memorial, it is difficult to argue with this sentiment.

Rose is war weary, and we steal naps along our trip, and we get back to Paris just as the afternoon is starting to inch towards evening.

It is great to share an experience like that with people like our tour group, a small collection of mostly Queenslanders, and two Mexicans on their honeymoon. Our tour guide was an extremely affable and gregarious man, who finds everything funny and has a warm demeanour that helps us all relax.

The ground of the Somme is hallowed for so many, and for Australians, where so many more died than near the Straits of the Dardenelles, this is also true.

But the sacrifice made here can be felt, and one spends any time in a place like Villers-Bretonneux, it’s hard not to be proud to be an Aussie. No matter how long we’ve been Australian, or what our thoughts on the machinations and politics of conflict, we have a place where, as a nation, we can share a common bond, brought home by the warm welcome and gratitude of a small Frence village called Villers-Bretonneux.

As I signed in the visitor’s book at the visitor’s centre of the USA Memorial at Omaha Beach, where so many French people had signed the book, echoing similar sentiments towards the Americans as the townsfolk of Villers-Bretonneux had done to us Aussies:

“They shall not grow old, as we that are left, grow old. Lest We Forget”